Abstract

Service was one of the main characteristics of the European Marriage Pattern in pre-industrial western Europe. During this stage of the life cycle adolescents could acquire the material assets and skills that were required to marry and start an independent household. Whilst in service, servants could save between 40 and 60 per cent of their cash wage. This paper illustrates that servants also used their earnings to assist their families. Parents of servants in particular could rely on both remittances in cash and in kind. As such, placing children in service was also a source of income for peasant household in Flanders. I argue that both patterns of land ownership and the restricted access to welfare ressources explain why servants displayed this altruistic behaviour.

Lambrecht, T. (2009), ‘Peasant labour strategies and the logic of family labour in the southern Low Countries during the 18th century’, in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), The economic role of the family in the European economy from the 13th to the 18th centuries, Florence, 637-649.

Vanhaute, E and Lambrecht, T. (2011), ‘Famine, exchange networks and the village community. A comparative analysis of the subsistence crises of the 1740s and the 1840s in Flanders’, Continuity and Change, 26, 155-186.